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App Store filling up with spammers and clones of popular apps

Marco Arment has noticed a growing problem on the App Store; as hits emerge from among the free and paid apps, some companies are doing a little search scamming. They're ripping off the names, styles, and sometimes even the art of popular iPhone apps. He went to get the popular Angry Birds game and found that there are companies actually selling apps with "Cheats" and "Trivia" added on to the titles, often reusing the artwork from the original game.

Certainly, some of these fall into a legal gray area (Angry Bird is technically another game, even though it's obviously hopping on the back of the more popular title), but some of them are straight up scams, and the angry reviews and terrible ratings prove that's the case. Arment calls out a few companies (whose titles are still on the App Store, as of this writing). He says that developers who feel an app is infringing on their trademarks can send a message to appstorenotices@apple.com to let Apple know about the problem.

We'd love to see Apple clean house on these, but of course, we're not yet sure of their position. They may have some guidelines that define how close an app can get before it's actually infringing, but some of these are clearly over the line. We'll have to wait and see what actions Apple decides to take.

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Marco Arment has noticed a growing problem on the App Store; as hits emerge from among the free and paid apps, some companies are doing a...
 

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digitalandre

What I'd like to see on the App Store as a possible solution would be a sort of "Flag this application" function, where you could also input a reason why you thought the application was inappropriate. Or maybe they should just toss out everything that gets less than one star or something. Sorting the wheat from the chaff in there is getting to be a major undertaking.

Thank heavens there's sites like this one where you can read decent reviews of apps before parting with your cash.

May 10 2010 at 5:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zoidbert

I have a problem with the Kindle with this kind of thing; if (when on your Kindle) you go to the bookstore, then go to the subcategory "science fiction"; after a few known books you'll get five pages of various editions of H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau".

As far as the quality/quantity thing goes in the App Store, I give you this quote from Philip J. Fry, when talking to Nimoy in FUTURAMA:

"C'mon, you know, STAR TREK -- 79 episodes, maybe a dozen good ones?"

May 08 2010 at 10:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MRCUR

I don't actually mind the cheat apps for what they are, but I hate that they're thrown in with all the actual games. If Apple is going to continue approving these apps for sale, then they need their own category. I hate having to look through them all when looking for an actual game I'm interested in, like Angry Birds for instance.

May 08 2010 at 10:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ken Broughton

It's pretty rubbish if it's true that Apple will take action only in cases of "infringing on trademarks". How many small games developers go to the expense of trademarking all the different aspects of their app that could be copied? This means only the big developers will get any help from Apple if true. They should play fair to everyone and act on obvious rip-offs whether or not it's trademarked.

May 08 2010 at 7:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
glyn.evans

AppStore scamming has been going on for months, from cloned apps to fake reviews, and although Apple did take action against Molinker (see http://bit.ly/8xwKIa), it wasn't long before they reformed under several different company names and flooded their same apps back in to the AppStore. Unless Apple take decisive action against these companies, I'm afraid this is something we the consumer will have to live with, and we will just have to check and double check that the app we are buying is the one we want, and worth the money.

May 08 2010 at 3:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Conrad

Just goes to show that Apples stance against flash has nothing to do with quality as there are currently far better apps written in Flash on the app store than this rubbish

May 08 2010 at 1:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Conrad's comment
Jaryd

I don't think Apple is saying all apps written in native Objective-C are good, just that all apps using a third party layer are mediocre or bad. At least with native coding it gives it a chance to 'run well.'

This is just Apple's stance, I'm not saying it's right or wrong.

May 09 2010 at 2:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Info

Well, we all complained about Apple's lengthy yet stringent approval process, and they bent to make everyone happy. Well know you can't have your cake and eat it too.

May 08 2010 at 12:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PSM

I hope Apple does something about it, considering how hard they make it for legitimate apps to get published. The flip side of that strictness has to be that they remove apps that serve no purpose but to be a nuisance.

May 07 2010 at 11:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave

Well, I've seen games that have Nintendo's mario character (in particular it was a geo-tagging game where you have Mario's likeness and other people have turtles or goombas, something to that effect). I'm surprised there aren't more lawsuits about this sort of thing.

May 07 2010 at 11:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mikehild

How did these get in the store in the first place? App store reviewers are deliberately letting these apps through the approval process???

May 07 2010 at 10:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to mikehild's comment
wygit

well, they weren't built using CS5 and Flash, so they can't be "substandard apps"

May 07 2010 at 10:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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